but he was quiet and obedient in
the presence of Davidson as if he had found a Tsar again.

"We must have a Tsar," said the Count to me. "But he must be terrible.
What the Russian people need is cruelty--not machine-gun bullets and
shells, but cruelty. They do not mind dying. The whip must be used!"

The gospel of the knout! His countess bade me pay no attention when he
said things of that kind. He was in reality the kindest of men and could
not bear to look on suffering.

He had lost lands, position, wealth, power of all kinds, in the old
Russia. He had something against the Russian people. In a curious way
he disapproved of Davidson's kindness. A man in rags would come in for a
pair of pants. Davidson would give him a pair out there and then.

"He does not understand us Russians. He should make him come five times
and then not give it him. That is the only way to get respected."

Davidson took me over the whole camp to all his hospitals, and showed all
there was to be seen. Wrangel's army seemingly arrived with nothing.
One might have expected to see a hopeless rabble, all dirty and living in
rags and filth, insubordinate and unkempt. How surprising to find the
very opposite--an army apparently of picked men, very clean,
well-disciplined and orderly, living in an encampment on which every
human care was lavished. Apparently the lower their hopes the greater
had become their discipline and _amour propre_. On a daily ration of
half-a-pound of bread and two ounces of very inferior "mince," the men
still preserved the stamina to do daily drill, dress with care, and keep
their tents in order. The tents had been mostly lent by the American Red
Cross, and the beds inside were improvised from dried weeds. In the
large green marquees, officers' quarters were divided off from the men's
by evergreens. In the hospital tents, little wooden bedsteads had been
framed everywhere of rough wood cut from the trees with sabres and
bayonets. In other tents regimental chapels had been arranged, and
religious paintings on cotton stretched upon hanging military blankets.
Stove-pipes for fires had been made of old "Ideal" milk-tins stuck to one
another in tens and twelves, with the bottoms all cut out. Outside the
various headquarters, behold formal gardens of various-coloured stones,
new cypress avenues planted, a rostrum in a sort of park for Wrangel to
make his speeches from, new-built sentry-boxes with pleasant sha